What Benefits Does Glass Offer to Interior Design?

The Outdoors Can Be Invited Inside by Glass Features

Although the focus of interior design is on the internal environment of a structure or space, that doesn’t necessarily mean that designers have to be restricted to aesthetics that come from architectural, modern, or man-made objects. One of the greatest benefits that glass offers to interior design is that it provides the opportunity to invite the exterior world inside.

In that respect, glazing can provide interior designers with extra visual real estate to use. When working with an area featuring an aesthetic connection between the outdoors and indoors, designers don’t need to put as much effort into creating an illusion of space.

By providing a view of a natural element such as a treescape or pond from the outdoors, glass features can help to enhance an interior design by drawing from nature and provide an inspiring and beautiful view.

The main idea here is that not only does glass have the potential for bringing the outside indoors but it can also potentially help designers change their focus to the exterior and away from the interior. With the wide range of glazing features that are currently available, and technology allowing for more practical and innovative solutions than ever, we decided to discuss some of the more popular glazing features that can provide interior design with something unique:

Glass Walls

In the past glass walls were obstructive and cumbersome due to needing to have thick support frames. However, modern glazing techniques allow architects and specialists to create totally frameless panels now, of practically any size. It can have a significant impact on an interior area.

Primarily, glass walls create a feeling of horizontal continuity. Although a basic window may provide a ‘framed’ view of a specific exterior feature, expansive and frameless glazed windows are able to create an illusion of an interior space extending beyond its true confines.

Glass Roofs and Skylights

Although glass floors and glass walls offer unique potential to interior design, in numerous ways glass roofs and skylights can provide the best of both worlds, while adding a couple of unique aesthetic characteristics to an area as well.

Glass roofs can provide both an aesthetic and practical element to interior designs. These glass installations have both opening and fixed options available and can offer access to exterior rooftop areas (like gardens or terraces) and at the same time provide aesthetics benefits that are offered by a frameless glazed future.

For any interior space, light is an integral and important element. Although some degree of daylight is provided by all exterior glass installations, it can be argued that glass roofs are the most reliable, consistent source. That takes to the second main benefit that glass offers to interior design:

Glass Provides a Design with the Advantages of Natural Light

Natural light is extremely important. Conditions like Seasonal Affective Discorder (SAD) are becoming more widely acknowledged and recognised, and we have a more comprehensive understanding of the way the body responds to external stimuli. We also are more aware these days of how critical natural light is to both our psychological and physical well-being.

Especially when it comes to practical and central space and rooms like bathrooms, dining areas, and kitchens with  glass work surfaces (spaces are used regularly and frequently throughout the day), incorporating natural light into interior design can help to maximise the use of sunlight for our daily lives.

A Timeless Quality Is Offered by Glass

Interior designers often need to find a balance between timelessness and aesthetics. Although anachronistic designs can definitely be appealing, the finest work is not always strictly confined to a single style or period and instead provides a lasting and striking visual impression that continues to be powerful for years to come.

Although some glass features may not buck an era’s trends (how can we forget 70’s style double glazing?) minimal glazing can provide a timeless and unique quality to a design. Installations like glass links as well as other products that involve frameless glazing are frequently combined with listed or historical buildings due to the fact that they provide an impact that is completely unobtrusive.

A Clear Solution

Glazing offers so many benefits to interior designs, but they are not always evident. Although it provides an abundance of practical and visual benefits, the greatest asset it provides is the way that it returns all of the potential of a specific environment back into the designer’s hands.